


Broken House

by Sotano



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - House of M, Excalibur Vol. 4 (2004), Genosha, House of M (2005), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:27:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29933412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sotano/pseuds/Sotano
Summary: Charles was actually pretty contented, on Genosha, despite everything. Of course that presaged doom. On the other side of the planet from himself and Erik, the Scarlet Witch was losing her mind.Prelude to House of M. Basically Charles F. Xavier scrambling to keep any semblance of control over a situation so far above his pay grade it's almost funny, except that it really fucking isn't.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Broken House

**Author's Note:**

> Alt title: a telepath, a sorcerer, and two fundamental forces of nature walk into the astral plane

Callisto was making coffee. She'd given up trying to explain to Charles how she got the instant coffee to her preferred consistency; a sort of industrial caffeine slurry; and tutted him out of the way. Charles missed tea so badly he occasionally ached for it, but his telepathically overworked brain thanked him for the caffeine.

They'd set out to find more Genoshan survivors and succeeded, and now all they had to do was shepherd the poor children back to Hammer Bay and their safe encampments in the ruins of the city. Erik would be ecstatic, and then saddened again, thinking of all the children who hadn't made it. Charles knew, because that was his own line of thinking. Still, Charles missed him. One night was not any great amount of time to have gone without seeing Erik, not after so many years of sporadic or even no contact, but since arriving on Genosha, they'd settled into a routine alarmingly quickly.

He missed having dinner with Erik. He missed having breakfast with him, playing chess, doing their respective duties to the island. The way Erik stole kisses as if everyone didn't know.

"You get this face when you're thinking about him," Callisto said, watching him over her shoulder. Her single eye conveyed a light mirth, like the shiny black eyepatch was nothing more than the permanent affectation of a wink. Charles liked it, just like he enjoyed how Callisto made the strange green surrogate-arm-tentacle-things her own as well.

"And you make this face every time you waltz into a room he and I are in," Charles shot back. Callisto stuck her tongue out at him, handing him the coffee. "What are you thinking about, this morning, then?"

"I'm think you're crazy. I mean, _he's_ crazy, that's not up for debate. But your crazy is subtler."  
"And what flavor of crazy am I, O wise sewer dweller?"  
Callisto fixed him with an appraising stare, a little more serious.

"You're the kind of crazy that still thinks Magneto is going to wake up one day and be a productive member of society. I'm not saying he's a bad person, Charles, although I mean, he definitely can be, but hell, so can you," she said, and Charles raised his glass in approval of her anticipating his response, "I just mean, if there was a way to fix what's been done to him, you would have found it already."

"It doesn't work that way," Charles said. "People don't work that way. Some days, Erik will be our savior. Don't look at me like that, it's true. You don't know how many times Erik has pulled through for mutantdom. Some days, he'll just be one small part of what the world needs. And some, he'll be the destructive, self-destructive egomaniac supervillain we're all terrified of. We don't get to have one without the other."  
"It's not worth it. Plenty of people are good all year round."  
"Yes. And they're not great."  
"So that's all this is," Callisto said. "Great Man Theory. Male ego bullshit."  
"I don't mean that his exceptionality is based in his cruelty, I mean it's based in his restraint from it. Yes, he can make bad choices, but he has never once truly fallen into the abyss."

Callisto folded her 'arms' across her chest. "Magneto has had some dark days for someone who hasn't hit rock bottom, if that's your defense."

Charles looked a bit frustrated. "Do you know what Magneto is? Really?"  
"A traumatized fifteen year old in an adult's body and a purple cape?"  
"A fundamental force of nature. Electromagnetism. Like his daughter, or like the Phoenix. Erik is a universal constant. He is _so much more powerful_ than he thinks he is. If he wakes up to that, really wakes up to it, God help us."

"That's some way to talk about the man you supposedly love," Callisto said. "You're kind of cold for the supposed romantic idealist."  
"I do love him. I love the bastard so much I've spent my entire adult life building things I think are important for the future, only to throw them to the wind when he needs me. But you know what? He's done the same, and he's got so much more reason not to. That's what people don't understand: Erik Lehnsherr is a good man. He fights twenty times harder than anyone else I've ever known to be good, to do the right thing. The fact that he didn't crack the world in two when he has repeatedly been given every possible reason to is proof enough of that."

Callisto sipped her drink, deep in thought. "I guess you have to think that, don't you? I guess that's the mentality we need from you? If this is a tactical thing. The two of you are serving a purpose together, and not just that jerk-off opposite ends of the spectrum shit, and you keep him in play."  
Charles opened his mouth, and shut it.  
"You are so much smarter than you let on," Charles said. "You are really, profoundly clever. And you live in a tunnel, where the hell did you read about Great Man Theory?"

It was of course at that second, when Callisto opened her mouth to respond, corners already upturned in a downright wicked smile, that all hell broke loose. God damn it, Charles had been happy this time. A messenger came running, out of breath, calling for Charles. Magneto was demanding an _audience_.

Bad signs. Bad signs everywhere. Magneto was apparently holed up, not taking visitors, in their little home on Hammer Bay. Shola showed them the way, anxious in a way Charles had never seen him, but all the young on the island looked up to Magneto by now. A force field--something he hadn't seen Erik do in years--kept out all visitors except, apparently, Charles. He crossed the threshold and left Shola and Callisto behind. Inside, the power was on. How the hell Erik had managed that was beyond Charles, unless he was powering it himself. Charles couldn't get that thought out of his head: _the man I left here couldn't do that_. And there he was, in regalia. Magneto, returned from the dead. It looked a bit ridiculous under the bright lights of the apartment.

And then Charles saw who was with him, and it all clicked into place. Wanda Maximoff was laid on their couch, unconscious.  
"Welcome home, Charles," Magneto said. "Forgive the presumptory summons, but I needed--I need--"  
"Erik, my God," Charles said. "What have you _done_?"  
If she was here, that means he'd gone out. He'd exposed himself. How--she was supposed to be in _New York_ , what the fuck was--  
"Charles, I'm begging you," Erik said, anguished and angry, cutting Charles' thoughts short. "Save her. It's--madness. Save her soul. Mine is damned."

Fucking Magneto and his fucking headfirst, stubborn, risk-prone, thoughtless, _selfish_ rush to action.

"You're the most wanted criminal on earth," Charles said. "Your _only_ security was in the fact that much of the world believes you dead. We have been painstakingly covering our asses for _months_ , and now you tell me you revealed yourself to the fucking _Avengers_?"  
"Charles, I had no choice."  
"I understand, you had to save her," Charles said. "But after stealing her away, do you seriously think they won't move heaven and earth to find you? And that they won't _come here first_?!"  
"If that happens--"  
"-- _when_ ," Charles said, putting his hands to his temples, feeling a migraine coming on.  
"-- _When_ that happens, old friend, I will _deal_ with them."  
Magneto sneered darkly. Exactly, of course, the sentiment which Charles was afraid of. He was rapidly losing his fraying grasp on this situation. His hand came to cover his eyes, rub down his face.

It was something Charles had always been aware of; much more than Erik ever was. Magneto, terrified, was certainly, quantifiably the most dangerous creature on the planet. Even to Charles Xavier. He was not stupid. Something had to break this atmosphere.  
"Will you please take off that damnable helmet?" Charles asked. "You must know what people will assume, what kind of effect that has on people. On me."  
Finally, Erik looked vaguely apologetic, floating the helmet off. Oh, God, his face. He looked even more exhausted than Charles. He looked--weak.  
"It didn't occur to me," he said, guilty. "I'm sorry, Charles, it just felt right."

"Erik, what happened?"  
Erik turned aside, shrugging off his metal-weave costume. For a moment it looked as though he was steadying himself on the armchair. His undershirt made him seem suddenly older, as he swept his unruly hair back, taking stock.  
"There was a broadcast about the Avengers. I didn't know she was in danger, but I _knew_. Blood calls to blood. Or power to power. I--Charles, she needed me."  
"She was in New York. How did you..?"

Erik turned back with a wicked grin. "I generated a pocket wormhole."  
"I don't believe this," Charles muttered. "I leave you alone for _barely a night_ \--"  
"--Don't yell, Charles, she's my _child_!"

It explained the tremor to Erik's muscles. It explained the paleness.

"You're going to get yourself _killed_. The exertion alone. Look at you! You can hardly stand!"  
"I've hurt her so much. I've caused them so much pain. I have to make this right."  
"Erik, God," Charles said, but the anger had been seeping out of him since Erik had removed the helmet. They looked at each other for a moment and things felt, if not tender, warmer at least. Erik came closer, put a hand to Charles' shoulder, and Charles pulled him down to eye level to ask: "Are you all right?"  
"New muscles," Erik explained, with a chagrined smile. "Always a cost. You look tired, old friend."  
"It's been an exciting day," Charles shot back.

They were close now. Charles could practically feel the heat radiating off of Erik's exerted form.

"Can you help her?" he asked.  
"Of course I'll try," Charles said. "I--"  
Erik kissed him, warm and gentle and more than a little desperate for the familiarity. Well, that answered that question, Charles thought. And a nagging voice added: for now.

All right. So this time, Charles was prepared to admit he'd been a little naïve. Blood pulsed hot and oozing out of a nosebleed; matching the tempo of the throbbing in his head. Not that he'd mention this, but he was fairly sure his vision had begun to blur around the edges. Scarlet Witch was fighting back, and she was fighting for a hell of a lot, constructing realities faster than Charles could shatter them.

She'd lost her children. He could still hear her cries. _Oh, God, I killed my husband._ Charles could never imagine that kind of pain, not in a million years, and she could force him out of her head so easily with it.

Quite frankly, right now, Charles wasn't remotely in her league, either as a therapist or a telepath.

She'd inherited her father's ability to throw up defenses, Charles supposed. Or maybe it was just a trauma response. At any rate, Charles was losing control of this situation, and the pressure was on. Soon, he'd have to consider the unthinkable. The Avengers were probably already considering it, probably had been for days. Worse, Charles knew, soon _Erik_ would have to consider it.

That if they didn't kill Wanda, she just might tear the world apart with her grief.

"Are you all right?" Erik asked, as if summoned from Charles' thoughts. Every hour Erik looked more haggard, but at least he'd taken the damned costume off. Charles could feel him pacing, sometimes, while he worked, waiting for the Avengers to come knocking. If Charles were to design a torture for Magneto, he'd be hard put to come up with a worse one than this.

He hadn't shaved in several days, and his hair was long and unkempt. It had started to collect some of the dust of Genosha Charles was sure already saturated their lungs.

"I heard the screaming," he added, with a tone of voice terribly close to cracking.

Charles said nothing still, pulling his handkerchief up over his nosebleed as Erik approached the balcony. It didn't matter. Erik was so powerful right now, hopped up on fear, he could probably sense the iron in the blood.  
"I'm sorry, Charles."  
"Erik, every time your daughter uses her powers to alter reality, she loses more of her grasp on it. And it's not getting better."

They didn't look at each other. Erik knew what Charles was saying, and Charles hated saying it. So they watched the orange light up the sky on their island. When had he stopped seeing it as ruins, as just a physical manifestation of what humans would do to mutants? When had he started thinking of it as _theirs?_

"Is she still asleep?" Erik asked.

"Yes. I 'suggested' it," Charles said, almost wry as he dabbed the remainder of the warm blood away. "But we can't keep drugging her and psychically putting her to sleep. It's inhumane. And it's hardly foolproof. And it's barely working," he added, pulling up the kerchief again as he realized still more blood had flown.

Erik took it into his hand, kneeling in front of Charles, cleaned the blood off properly. Even the dried bits at the upper corner of his lip. Still not meeting Charles' eyes.

"Stop blaming yourself, Erik, she's a grown woman."  
"Stop reading my mind without permission," Erik countered tersely, stepping up and away.  
"I wasn't."

A beat. Charles used it to breathe.

"I can't help it, Charles," Erik said finally. "I put them through hell for what I believe. They never had a chance for a normal life, because of _my_ war against the humans. And the truth is, I waged that war and I _lost_."

He gestured out to the island, letting the bitterness in his voice bleed into the motion. "I was prepared to sacrifice them. I was. You know that. And for _nothing._ " 

Charles should have hastened to disagree. Instead he said nothing, not trusting himself. He felt too weak himself, felt too much of a failure to address Erik's pain. All he could do was clutch the hand Erik had put to his shoulder and watch the sun set, and hope against hope that he'd find a solution in the morning.

"I probably deserve this. But she doesn't." 

"I need to go to New York," Charles said. "We're going to need help, containing her." They locked eyes for a moment, before Erik nodded, slipping his hand away from Charles' grasp. 

In New York, Charles struggled with who to call first. He'd burned bridges with the X-Men, but that wasn't the problem. Not at a time like this. No, his children would come running if he called. Instead, he found himself in Steven Strange's hideaway, with the rationale that he could help in the astral plane, and that his magic might be able to undercut what Charles couldn't combat in Wanda. It was a thin hope, to be fair, but that was what Charles had always built his career off of. 

"Of course you can't help her," Strange said, floating in a meditative pose. They'd been colleagues in Richards' ridiculous Illuminati, and had always understood each other quite well. "Your patient is a woman whose power can reorder physical causality. Her father wields one of the foundational forces of creation. You are an incredibly powerful telepath, and you are caught up in them. Telepathy functions on belief, doesn't it?"

"You're saying I'm letting myself be sidetracked," Charles said. "Letting them bleed in, muddy it all up."  
Strange shot him an eminently sympathetic look. "Forgive me, Professor, but Wanda isn't the only one in pain. And you love him too much not to let it affect you. You're too close to this."  
"I'd give anything right now to be my step-brother," Charles said wryly, "and to only have to deal with the world by hitting things."  
"The three of you," Strange said. "I can sense all of you around her mind. To heal one, you have to deal with all three, and that includes you."  
"I'm fine," Charles said automatically.  
"Of course you are," Stephen said. "Which is why you've come to an old colleague for help rather than your children, who you do not want to allow to see you in this state."

Strange opened his ridiculous eye, and Charles fell back into the astral plane with a feeling like he was being pulled by his insides. His psyche was already close to her, Strange was right.

"Wanda's in here," Stephen said. "But this is your mind. I--I'm not going to be of any help. She's made things to fight me, and I am no psychic. I can distract her, but that leaves you and Magneto."

Charles nodded. With that, his ally was gone, pulled away in a flurry of red, and his own ideas came out to play.

And, fine. The inside of his mind was a fucking complete mess. He was man enough to admit that, looking around. Nothing was steady, and when he looked down, he was in his old army uniform. This was a battleground, but it refused to sit still.

He was in Korea, and a dead body was laid over his back. He was in Genosha, and a dead body was buried under rubble. He was in New York, and Jean was being murdered, twice. He was a child, and Cain was torturing him, and he was in Cain's mind and felt his enjoyment of the torture. He was a young man, fresh from the war, spitting on his step-father's grave, leaving for Haifa.

Moira's stupid ghost watched him, laughing and whispering with her musical lilt. Moira left him a letter explaining she didn't want to marry him. Moira experimented on Erik, in a lab. She, as Charles remembered her from their engagement, and he as Charles remembered him from Haifa.

He was roiled in self-loathing. All his worst mistakes. Cassandra Nova stalked him in the long grass, showed him a mirror of himself, how if you took the story of Charles' life and shifted it _just so_ , Charles became a monster. He used people, and he especially used the people he loved, and he abandoned them for Erik, and he abandoned Erik for them, and he threw anything and everything he could into the cannon of his ideals. Everyone was just... ammunition, against the future he didn't want.

The worst part was that this happened to him just as often, and he could see the awfulness of it. To have his bodily integrity violated, to have his free will torn to shreds by Onslaught and Cassandra and all the others, to just be an empty shell for someone else's hate. To just be an empty shell, half-dead, somewhere out in Shi'ar space.

Occasionally he'd catch a glimpse of Dr Strange, tangled in his own spiderweb, but Charles Xavier was too busy fighting himself to be of any help.

His usual safe havens were wrecked. When he tried to go to his study, he was thrown into his younger self, before any of this, after he'd finished his last Oxford degree, and his father sneered at him from a desk Charles would burn five years later. Step-father.  
"Do a tour," he said, "and I'll _think_ about letting you marry the Scottish girl."

And when he fled from the study, he went to his beach. Haifa, but cleared of people. He walked along the shore, and Magneto was there. But it was wrong, Magneto was old, and he grinned maliciously.

"All this time playing domestic bliss with me," he said. "Seeing me in pain, your favorite wounded animal. You forgot what would happen when I got _better_. You don't want that, do you, Charles? No. You want your little fantasy of a nation, you want your quiet little sunset conversations, you want for me to kiss you and hang off of your every word. You want me to _cook for you_. How long did you think that would last, when we started getting news broadcasted here? I am _fucking inevitable_ , Charles. Kill me now, and spare yourself the pain."

Why could Charles not speak? All he could do was flee. Change the scene again. Change. Look away. Run away.

"Oh, Christ," Charles said, and the world stopped shifting. "That's not my psyche, is it? It's _yours_." 

The world rumbled, and fell into darkness. Charles stepped out, still in his military fatigues, carrying his rifle slung over his back. Inside was a little girl's room, and Wanda was asleep on the bed. Erik was at her bedside, reading to her. When Charles approached, he finished his sentence.

"She's quiet when I read to her," he said. "And when I hold her hand."  
He looked so broken, Charles' heart ached. But there was something deeply, profoundly wrong here.  
"Wanda is _burning_ , Charles, just like--and I can't--I can't save her."  
"You're manipulating her. You've been manipulating me. All those awful places in my memories, all things I've shown you. But I don't want you to die. _You_ want it."  
Erik sighed, smiling wistfully, gesturing at them.  
"This is the way it's always been between us," he said, saddened but resigned. "There's never any time to think. I'm far too dangerous, Charles."

"Why am I here, Erik?" Charles asked softly. He already knew the answer.

Erik looked at him, still stubbornly refusing to say it outright. "What else can I do, Charles? I cannot let her die, I cannot. And yet her life is a torment, such a fury of madness that death would be a mercy. My children look at me with a revulsion I deserve. Look at their lives, look at what I've driven them to, for my lack of ability. I've done such _harm_ , Charles, especially to--to the people I should have loved more than my life."

Something about all of this enraged Charles like nothing else. The use of past tense. The way he looked at Charles with pity and self-loathing, as if Charles' life was just another thing Erik fucked up.

"And _this_ is your solution? Helping her retreat into a cocoon of fantasy, while I put a _bullet_ through your brain?"  
Erik shrugged but wouldn't meet Charles' gaze. "I want her to be happy. I want to be at peace. I don't want you to get yourself killed trying to fix the problem I started."  
He said it calmly, as if this were the logical best outcome for those two goals. But Charles' disgust only grew.  
""I" want this. "I" don't want. "I". It's never about what's right, it's never about any of us, it always comes down to what _you want_." 

"What's the alternative, then, hm?" Erik snapped. "To allow my child to continue her descent into madness? Or worse? I will not be that monster."  
"Have you considered what _she_ wants? She's not your fucking puppet, Erik. You love her. She wants that more than anything. Show it. It's stepping out now and leaving her on her own that would be monstrous, and the fact that you can't see that _shocks_ me. Be there for her, and earn the peace you claim to want."

"Is that the best you can offer?" Erik asked, malicious but with a desperate twinge to it. "Another fucking homily?"

"Apparently so," Charles said, transforming himself. He felt his body change, back to his real age, back to the clothes he was wearing in the real world. He didn't feel young. He didn't want to feel young. But Erik saw that for what it was: Charles pressing the eject button.

"Don't leave," Erik said, rising. He took Charles' arm, closed his hand around his wrist. "Don't leave me, Charles. I--"

Charles wasn't expecting it when Erik kissed him, which proved just how far out of Erik's head he'd already stepped. But this time Charles snapped, pulling away and levelling an accusatory finger at him.

"--Or what? You won't be responsible for what happens next? I've heard it one too many times, Erik. If you fly off the handle again, so be it. I'll know at last if you're truly the man I thought you were all these years, or simply a chimera of all the false hopes of my youth--the youth I spent chasing after you. Time to face the fucking music."

And with that, Charles Xavier stepped out of the astral plane.

Steven Strange gasped and sputtered on the floor of his mansion. Charles, in his chair, crumpled back, controlled his breathing only marginally better. He felt that awful phantom ache that came after exerting oneself in the astral plane, too aware now of his body. His anger faded as the reality of their situation set in. Charles was about to have to make some choices Erik could easily call monstrous. He just didn't know what to do, for once in his stupid life.

"So now we know," Strange said, standing up. "Our combined talents can isolate her for about..." he checked the grandfather clock against the wall. "Fifteen minutes. That felt a lot longer."

"A lifetime," Charles agreed. "What did you see?"

"Wanda. My failures. We fought, we spoke. I imagine it was the same with you and Erik. There's something she responds to with the both of you, though. Something the two of you want."

Charles waved a hand airily, searching for a way to articulate it. Not that he particularly wanted to articulate his, nor Erik's, pain; but after what he probably just dragged Strange through it seemed silly to withhold information that might save his life.

"For Erik and I, it's always been about family. It's all familial trauma and aspirations, in the astral plane, all children and mothers and fathers. With me, I like to think I'm self-aware enough to recognize it's a question of surrogating a love that was absent. With him, it's more primordial. He tries to build a home, and a world, where he can feel safe, where he need never again feel afraid. It ruins itself, because the child in him can't escape those nightmares. The fear makes him angry, which makes him destructive. And everything he builds falls to rubble."

"I don't know him very well," Strange said, "but you could just as easily be describing Wanda."  
They exchanged a look, and Charles looked out the window instead. Neither wanted the other's pity. "The _hell_ of it is," he said, watching the rain pour, "the force that drives them both is love. The fear gets in the way, but they love so much. They try so _hard_."  
"You still believe it's profound," Strange supplied. "You still believe they can redeem themselves."

"If they can't," Charles said, sighing, "what hope is there for the rest of us?"

The rain poured against the window frame, lit up white in the moonlight. His mind was on an island off the coast of Madagascar. What would Callisto have to say to him, now? Charles' reflection was obliterated by a distant lightning strike, and he thought of Erik, and the fact that tomorrow, he would need to speak to the Avengers about killing his daughter. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I know Wanda's witchy ability isn't technically one of the marvel fundamental forces at this time in canon ((I think it's uhh electromagnetism, gravity, strong nuclear, weak nuclear, punch and big fuckin space fire bird)), no I don't want to see your spreadsheet. I have my own, and I like to cross out the bits that aren't as poetic as I want them to be.
> 
> Not joking, maybe a bit under half of this dialogue is straight from the comics. I cut some and added some, but not as much as you'd think.
> 
> Based on the end of Excalibur (2004) and the beginning of House of M (2005)


End file.
